


it's all happening

by outwardbound93



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Almost Famous AU (very loosely), Canon Compliant, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Lad and dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 06:32:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11374539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outwardbound93/pseuds/outwardbound93
Summary: Louis clutches Freddie’s pillow to his chest and says, “You’ll watch out for him, won’t you?” And doesn’t add,Like you’ve done me, though he figures Niall hears it all the same.“Aye, I reckon I can be the little lad’s daddy wit’ you,” Niall says, wringing a laugh out of Louis. “But what are we going to tell Eleanor?”or, freddie joins niall's band, and louis learns to let go.





	it's all happening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1000_directions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1000_directions/gifts).



> i was complaining about the lack of niall teaching freddie to play guitar fic, and then the incredible [1000-directions](http://1000-directions.tumblr.com/) went and wrote me [one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11369730/) (that you should definitely go read rn, don't worry i'll wait), so here's my best shot at a suitable thank-you. thank you. <3

Briana’s shocked, “No,” cuts through the ringing silence in Louis’s head. He realizes his mouth is hanging open so he snaps it shut quick, and then he sends a look to Eleanor and his son, who’s still stood in front of them in the middle of the living room with his hands clenched into fists, and gets up.

“I’m going to…” Louis trails off, nods his head after Bria, and follows her into her bedroom. She’s carried on straight into the en suite toilet, where she’s stood over the sink, looking back at her own pale, stricken face. “Knock, knock,” Louis says, and raps on the open door with his knuckles. He doesn’t mean to knock loudly but the sound echoes in Briana’s spacious, sterling white bathroom, and he grimaces.

Briana catches Louis’s eyes in the mirror. “You have to tell him no,” she says.

“Bria…” Louis starts, stops, waits to hear what he knows she’s going to say. They’ve had this conversation already, is all. Several times, in fact.

“Our baby’s asking to go on tour, Louis. He’s _seventeen_ years old. He should be finishing high school and going to prom and getting his heart broken and playing with his friends, not –” her voice cuts out, but she makes an expansive gesture with her hand that captures most of what she’s trying to say. _Not growing up,_ Louis hears.

He bites the inside of his cheek. “He’s seventeen,” Louis says gently. “He’s old enough to know what he wants.”

“He’s not old enough to know what’s best for himself,” Briana says. She finally turns round and folds her arms over her chest. Often, in arguments and disagreements with her over the years, Louis’s found himself swelling up to match her. Right now, she seems like the size of a giant. “That’s why it’s our job as parents to put a stop to this.”

Louis lets out a gusty noise, and Briana’s eyes narrow, and he knows he’s been caught out.

“You three haven’t been planning this, have you? _Louis,_ ” her voice rises into a shriek at the end. “You – you call Niall right now and tell him he can’t have our son for his band. Tell him you need him to rescind the offer. He needs someone with more experience.”

Louis weighs his words carefully. “No,” he says, finally.

Briana seems to grow a few inches taller. For such a tiny woman, Louis feels like he’s being pushed right out of the room by the size of her. “Why the hell not, Louis Tomlinson?” she asks.

“Because,” Louis says, and stalls again. He casts about for a way to explain himself.

He’d said the same thing to Freddie when he first approached his dad, is the thing. Louis had been at the recording studio working with a new act from his label, trying to sort through the absolute clusterfuck they’d made of all their lovely demos.

The little lad cast the band in the recording booth a longing look, and then he sat down in the rolling chair next to Louis’s, his hands clasped between his knees. Louis had thought for sure his baby was having a baby, but it wasn’t that. Louis was so caught up in the relief of not being a granddad just yet that he had to ask Freddie to repeat himself. “What?”

“Niall called me up,” Freddie repeated, his little face set. “He asked me to tour with him while his guitarist’s in hospital.”

Louis very carefully marshaled his expression into one of surprise. "Niall...my Niall?" he asked. He could hear Niall's soft brogue in his ear, see the newly minted wrinkles etched into his face the last time Niall came down for a visit and listened to Louis worry about his kid. And tentatively offered a solution. 

Freddie got up and started pacing in the cramped space. He was so tall his head nearly brushed the mixing equipment bolted to the ceiling. Louis couldn’t quite believe it. “I don’t want anyone to think I’m, like, buying my way in, you know? Like, ‘oh, your dad’s Louis Tomlinson, no wonder you’re here.’”

 _Where’s here?_ Louis remembers wanting to ask. _Where are you going?_

“But it wouldn’t be, and that’s the best part! Uncle Niall needs a guitarist and I don’t even have to go on with my own name, or anything, it’d just be a great way to get some experience and – and find out if this is what I really want to do,” Freddie stumbled over his own words.

It was enough to make Louis laugh. “I’m not your mum, lad, c’mon now.”

Freddie dropped heavily back into the chair across from his dad. “It’s a great gig,” he said simply. “And I figured you were more likely to say yes to this than lettin’ me drop out.” He scratched his ankle. “School’s not for me, Dad.”

Louis could feel the back of the chair pressing against his spine, and the back of his trainer wearing a blister into his heel, and a gentle breeze from the AC unit blowing overhead. All that felt so far away from this conversation. Louis didn’t notice all the time but it always struck him over the head sideways that there was this whole other human being so like him.

No, not _like_ him. _From_ him. It made Freddie hard to look at, and hard to look away from. He was so much like Louis that it frightened him sometimes. No, Louis decided, he wasn't surprised that Freddie would jump at the chance. Maybe he'd just hoped. 

“Is this really what you want?” Louis asked. 

Freddie Tommo raised his head, said fiercely, “Yes, more than anything,” and that was that, really.

“It’s Niall,” Louis finally says. “He’ll take care of him.”

“Why can’t you take care of him?” Briana asks. “Take him to the recording studio with you, or something.”

Maybe if Briana wasn’t so fiercely protective of her son, so worried about him, she could understand. Getting everything you want isn’t the same as earning it.

Freddie wants to earn it.

It takes a series of lengthy phone chats with Niall, with Freddie’s school, and with Niall’s head of security for Briana to give her blessing. “You have to walk the stage at graduation,” she tells Freddie, ticking the list off on her fingers, “robe on and everything, you have to call every single night so I know nothing’s happened to you, and you have to be safe. If I see even so much as one single picture of you acting a fool, I am coming to get you.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “Do you understand?”

Freddie leapt out of his seat and scooped his mum into a crushing hug, and Eleanor tangled her fingers with Louis’s on his thigh under the table.

“He could’ve been a footie star,” Louis sighs into the phone. It’s the night before Freddie’s due to leave and Louis’s sat on his bed in his room, looking at Freddie’s open, empty suitcase. He drags his fingers over the quilt on Freddie’s bed, tracing the familiar paisley pattern as easy as pressing a tune into the piano.

Niall _oohs_ into the phone. “He’d have let me manage him, d’you think?”

Louis gives a little laugh. Freddie’s gone to a going-away party at his friends so Louis’s sat alone in his son’s room, looking at shelf of dusty participation trophies he’d won in elementary school and the increasingly complex and expensive guitar gear he’d picked up since. He’s Louis’s son, through and through, so the room is in an absolute tip. Louis leans back till he’s lying with his head on Freddie’s pillow, looking up at the last of his faded stick-on stars.

“He’s dead excited,” Louis says, needing something to say.

“So am I,” Niall says easily. “Gonna be sick.”

Louis gives a proper laugh. “That’s what you said about our last tour, Neil.”

“And it was,” Niall says. Louis can just picture his shrug.

“I do get it, you know,” Louis feels compelled to say. “From, like. ‘Cos when I started things up after 1D was done.”

“What’s that?” Niall asks.

Louis sits up and fidgets with one of the game controllers on Freddie’s desk. “Fred. Having to be his own man, and all that.”

“He’s not disowning you, mate. ‘S not like you’re dying,” Niall adds, softer. “He wants to run away with the circus. Who wouldn’t?”

Louis clutches Freddie’s pillow to his chest and says, “You’ll watch out for him, won’t you?” And doesn’t add, _Like you’ve done me,_ though he reckons Niall hears it all the same.

“Aye, I reckon I can be the little lad’s daddy wit’ you,” Niall says, wringing a laugh out of Louis. “But what are we going to tell Eleanor?”

…

 

Freddie calls while Louis’s at the studio, so Louis drops his headphones on the mixing board, nods at his producer, who continues gazing morosely at the band in the booth, and sneaks out to the hallway to take his kid’s call.

“We’re just done rehearsals for the day,” Freddie says. “I didn’t remember London being this cold.”

Louis hums knowledgeably. “It takes ages to get used to, buddy. It’s that wet-cold, it goes straight to your bones.”

“I don’t like it,” Freddie admits, which unleashes a torrent of grievances. He doesn’t understand the tube and he’s not so good at understanding the broad array of UK accents and it’s nothing like home, where palm trees brush the cloudless sky year-round and most everybody’s up for a juice and a hike.

“And?” Louis prompts him.

“Dad, I don’t think I’m good enough,” Freddie confesses, his voice going low and quiet. Louis can hear him swallow. “And, like, I don’t think Niall would fire me, but maybe he should. These others guys are so good and I’m _not_ and I don’t know why I ever thought I could do this.” He laughs wetly. “I want to come home.”

Louis wrestles with the urge to shout, _YES! Come home now, I’ve already bought your ticket!_

He clears his throat and licks his lips. “Come back here? What, with your old school and all your friends you told you were going on tour? What are you going to do, go to _class_?”

Freddie laughs again, sounding a little less wet this time. “I mean…”

“It’s never fun not to be great,” Louis says, “but you’ve got to crawl before you can walk.” He has a vivid, overwhelming memory of Freddie crawling across the living room into Louis’s waiting arms, toddling around the back garden with a tiny toy ball at his feet, smiling that big, bald smile up at him, and has to swallow hard.

Freddie heaves a sigh. “Yeah.”

“Nobody expects you to know everything,” Louis feels the sudden need to say. He thinks of himself at X-Factor, aged eighteen, and presses, “You’re just a kid, laddy. Nobody’s going to be surprised if you ask questions.”

Freddie’s quiet for a moment. “Yeah, just.” Louis waits. “I dunno. I’m your kid. Can’t help feeling like…”

“You make me proud,” Louis says simply, “all the time. Always. Just by being you.”

His kid groans. “Oh, my God, why are you such a sap,” he whines. “You’re so lame, Dad.”

Louis grins. “Get back out there, kid.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, and rings off. Louis tells his phone, “Glad you called,” and then he pockets it. He stands for a moment in the buzzing quiet of the hallway, and then he shakes his head and ducks back inside, back to work.

…

 

Niall’s the one who calls to invite Louis to the Red Rocks gig.

“Freddie doesn’t want me to come,” Louis says, watching the waveform undulate as his band’s latest track plays on his laptop. They’ve mostly whipped it into publishable shape, but it’s still missing that something special. That _oomph_ that elevates a song from a bunch of words and notes into a piece of art. Louis doesn’t know how to say it, but he feels it. “Says it’d make him nervous.”

“Well, yeah,” Niall acknowledges. Louis can just imagine him tipping his head. “But I still think you should come. Surprise him at the end, like.”

“Is this you offering me VIP tickets, then?” Louis asks. He finally caves and leans back in his seat, stretching his legs under the desk.

Eleanor passes by with a squeeze to his shoulder and a kiss dropped on the top of his head, and Louis can’t help trying to grab her wrist to reel her back in. She pulls away with a soft laugh, a steaming cup of tea balanced carefully in her hand. She sets it on the edge of the desk and leans in close to say, “Hi, Nialler.”

“Hey, Eleanor,” Niall says. Louis’s phone rings, so Louis rolls his eyes and accepts the invite to FaceTime. Eleanor settles on the arm of his chair, Louis’s arm snaking round her waist for support. “Wow! Looking beautiful as ever. Not you, Lou, you old fox, I mean El. Still no chance you’d leave Louis for me, darlin’?”

His blue eyes crinkle up in a laugh and Louis’s heart gives a warm, familiar lurch. Niall’s got a direct line to Louis’s heart, just like Freddie’s got. ‘Cept Freddie was born with it, and Niall’s just been mining a deeper and wider channel their whole life.

Eleanor leads her head against Louis’s, smiles, and says, “Not just yet, but try again later.” She presses a soft kiss to Louis’s temple and slides out of the circle of his arm. Louis can’t help watching her go.

“So,” Niall says, bringing Louis’s attention back round to him. His beard’s fully grown in and he wears his glasses more often than not. He looks a man now, and it shouldn’t be a shock, but it is. “You’ll come, eh?”

“No,” says Louis stubbornly.

Niall’s face crumples into a frown. “Fine, don’t tell him you came. But I swear t’ God, Louis, if you don’t come see our damn kid play guitar, I’ll –”

“You’ll what?” Louis laughs.

Niall’s face relaxes into an easy grin. “I dunno. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Okay,” Louis sighs, just as he knew he would. “But I want VIP.”

Niall rings off still laughing. It’s not true but it feels like Niall’s been laughing their whole lives. It’s not the kind of misremembering Louis wants to correct.

The Red Rocks gig is amazing, which comes as no surprise. It’s one of Niall’s favorite venues and the band’s been playing together for the better part of two months now. That’s time enough to have found their rhythm. Louis sits with Eleanor on one side and Bria and her husband on the other and lifts his phone to take a shot. He comes away with a picture of Freddie and Niall and the rest of the band onstage, captured in a moment of sweat-soaked joy.

He’s been watching Freddie play via YouTube videos for the whole time, of course, but it doesn’t prepare Louis for the way he feels right now. He’s been on the other side of the camera, he thinks, so many times before.

 _We were so young when we were in the band,_ a tiny voice in his mind counters. _It hardly counts._

But it does. Seeing Freddie up there next to Niall, Louis can see that it does.

By the time the band’s rushing off stage after the chorus, Louis and the rest of Freddie’s family are waiting for him in the dressing rooms. He barrels into the room, stops short, and promptly looks like he’s about to start bawling.

“Surprise!” Louis shouts, and Freddie laughs unexpectedly, and Niall trucks on in behind. The whole band’s drenched in sweat and the smell of cooking music on a hot spring day, and Freddie lets Louis pull him into a tight hug with no mind to it at all. Just giving himself back to them again, one more time.

Niall’s next, smelling like sunscreen and toothpaste. Louis curls his fingers into the back of Niall’s shirt, and Niall pulls away without dislodging him. “He did good, didn’t he?” Niall asks, eyes bright. “I told you he would.”

It feels as though Niall’s coming to Louis’s defense once more, like he’s saying, _We all adore him,_ and Louis buries his feelings in a friendly pinch and nipple twist, and Niall ducks away howling.

The band goes out for drinks because of course they do. Louis leaves Freddie to sort out having his mum and his stepmum out at a bar with him and perches on a stool at the bar next to Niall. Niall glances at him sideways and takes his hat off his head. He sets it on the bar and runs a hand through his dark hair. Louis’s already started to notice his hair thinning out, and Harry’s for sure, but Niall’s is hanging in there. _Baby-faced,_ Louis thinks fondly, and shakes his head. He thinks about telling Niall, _I still think of you with bleached hair and spaghetti arms and braces,_ and decides not to.

“You’re welcome to come to the next one,” Niall says, predictably. “I’ll invite you up to do a song with us meself if you like.”

Louis just laughs.

Niall leans in conspiratorially. “Really, Tommo,” he says. “This doesn’t, like, make you think about it? About us?” His eyes are bright and Louis can smell Guinness on his breath, so he knows Niall must’ve had a few drinks already. It doesn’t make him mean or stupid or sloppy, like it does some people. It makes him look a little sleepy, a little too easy to touch.

“Sure. ‘Course it does. But we never played Red Rocks.”

Niall makes an impatient sound. “Not _then,_ you idiot. Now.”

Louis stops breathing. He can envision it so clearly: Harry and Liam and Louis and Niall, putting aside their creative differences and the intervening twenty or so years to play together again. Louis would do it just for the love of it, it doesn’t even matter if anyone wanted to come to any of the shows. In fact, he’d pay money to throw Gatorade on Liam and finally drag Harry into a headlock like he always wanted to. In a friendly way, of course.

Louis presses his lips together. He thinks about the band keeping him away from his mum, putting so much stress on his relationship with Eleanor, cutting him down and building him up at the same time, and it’s enough to let it go. Music was always the thing that saved him, that rescued him and carried him away and brought him back home the long way round. Home is what Louis always wanted most; he reckons he ought to stay.

He can see Freddie across the bar seeking refuge between the sax player and Niall’s drummer, a karaoke book open between them, and shakes his head. He’s got his best lads on stage together in his mind’s eye, and he doesn’t have the words for it till long after he flies home to LA, when he’s on the phone with Zayn, of all people.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” says Zayn, in his low, smokey, familiar voice. “Them getting to do what you two couldn’t, I mean. Setting the universe right, like.”

“How do you mean?” Louis asks, though he reckons he knows.

“Staying together,” Zayn answers.

“Ah,” says Louis. He thought so, too.

…

 

Freddie returns to LA the morning of his graduation. He hugs his dad sleepily and passes out slumped against the window on the drive home from the airport, and Louis keeps stealing glances at him every chance he gets. This is his kid, this piece of Louis’s heart that grew from such a tiny thing to something Louis loves more than life itself, and he’s grown up. His hair’s shaggy and his fingertips are freshly calloused and he’s wearing the kind of skinny jeans Louis didn’t know people made anymore.

Louis pulls into the driveway and hesitates to wake him up, but he’ll rest better in his own bed. Louis puts his hand on Freddie’s shoulder and jostles him gently. “Fred.”

“Mm, yeah,” Freddie gets out. “I’m up, is it time to go?”

Louis smiles. “Nah, buddy. No show today. You don’t have to go.”

Freddie rolls his head against the window and peers up at his dad with Louis’s own blue eyes, still fuzzy with sleep. Louis's heart misses a step. Fred frowns suddenly. “Ugh. Mom’s gonna make me take, like, a million pictures in my graduation gown, isn’t she?”

A laugh bubbles out of Louis's chest. “Yeah,” he agrees, and jumps out of the car to collect Freddie’s case from the boot.

Louis can’t help himself, so he posts a video of Freddie crossing the stage to collect his diploma, a polite smile on his face. The stage looks far too small for him.

Later, at Freddie’s graduation party, Louis finally checks his phone. Amongst the slew of congratulatory texts and tweets is a message from Niall.

 _You did a good job, Louis,_ Niall’s sent, and Louis thinks, _Yeah, we did._


End file.
